Chapter III Syed Ahmad Khan and the Shifting Notion of 'Self'

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Chapter III
Syed Ahmad Khan and the Shifting Notion of ‘Self’

In Sir Syed Ahmad I saw the grandeur, the lion like strength, the high ideals, the passionate
enthusiasm, of a great mind. No Musalman, whom I ever met, impressed me more by the force and
dignity of his character and his commanding intellectual greatness than Sir Syed Ahmad. Where he
went, he naturally took the lead. His personality demanded it, and men instinctively followed him.
His very presence and appearance were commanding. His was a born leader of men. (C. F.
Andrews)1

3.1 Introduction
Syed Ahmad Khan2 or more popularly Sir Syed holds an important and yet
controversial place in the history of India and the Indian subcontinent. Syed Ahmad is
today most widely known as the founder of Aligarh Muslim University in the town of
Aligarh in the western Uttar Pradesh of today‘s India. The University was founded by
Syed Ahmad in 1875 in the form of a school under the auspice of the Mohammedan
Anglo-Oriental College. The College began functioning in 1877 and it achieved the status
of a university in 1920. The establishment of the College in 1875 was deeply implicated
in the political, social, religious and cultural history of India and it is for this reason that
Syed Ahmad becomes such an important figure in the nineteenth and twentieth century
Indian history.
Rajmohan Gandhi begins his portrait of Syed Ahmad Khan as someone who is
―hailed, and assailed, as the founder of Muslim separatism on the subcontinent‖ and also

1 C. F. Andrews. Zaka Ullah of Delhi. 1929. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2003.
2 Various scholars have used different spellings while referring to Syed Ahmad. Some of the usual spellings
are Syed Ahmad, Syed Ahmed, Sayyid Ahmad and Sayyid Ahmed. In this thesis, I have followed the
spelling Syed Ahmad which has been used by Shan Muhammad, former chairperson of Sir Syed Academy
at Aligarh Muslim University and one of the most prolific writers on Syed Ahmad Khan. Variations in
spelling have been retained in quotations of other writers. Again, instead of using the surname Khan, as is
the practice in academic writings, I have kept Syed Ahmad as he was/is referred to as either Sir Syed or
Syed Ahmad.
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someone who is ―blamed, and praised, as a modernizer of Islam‖ (R. Gandhi 1987:19).
Indeed, Syed Ahmad was more than a founder of a College. He intervened in the social
history of his time, especially that of Muslim community, in the second half of the
nineteenth century and left it changed forever. He emerged as a leader of the Muslim
community, or more specifically, the Muslim elite at a time when ‗Muslim‘ as a category
was under the onslaught of the British colonial rule and the dignity of community had
reached its nadir. It is to Syed Ahmad‘s credit that he fashioned a new identity for his
community vis-à-vis the British colonial rule. This chapter will look at how Syed Ahmad
went about fashioning a new ‗self‘ for himself and how in the process he also fashioned a
‗national subject‘ which stood against the normative ‗national subject‘ put together by the
Hindu elites such as Bankim and others in the late nineteenth century.
Syed Ahmad was born in 1817 and died in 1898. His childhood and youth was
spent in a time of great upheaval and his middle age saw the most momentous event of
the nineteenth century India, the 1857 revolt. In order to understand Syed Ahmad and his
development as a person and an ideologue, it is important to locate him in the social
history of his time.

3.2 Social History of the Nineteenth Century Mughal India

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the political control of Mughal India
came to be confined to the limits of Red Fort and it ended precisely and conclusively in
1857 with the arrest of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and his exile to
Burma on the charges of instigation of mutiny against the British East India Company.
But its political place in the nineteenth century is less important for its wielding of
political power and more important for its social contours and the far-reaching changes
influences it had mostly in North India, from the erstwhile North-West Frontier Provinces
(current Pakistan) to Bengal (current Bangladesh). This influence needs to be read against
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the upheaval generated by the disintegration of the Mughal rule and the consolidation of
the British rule over India. This shift in the administration brought about changes in the
social structure as well as between the society and the administration. To understand this
changing relationship, it is important to map the social life under the Mughal rule.
To say that the Mughal rule was the Muslim rule over India will be to fall into the
trap of British colonial historiography. The Mughal rule right from the times of Akbar
had an eclectic mix of Hindu and Muslim office holders. This gives it a different flavour
from the idea of Islamic rule where Muslims were supposed to rule over the non-believers
(non-Muslims). The Mughal rulers, generally, kept Ulama3 (Muslim priestly class) at a
distance from the political affairs and developed a system where they brought in non-
Muslim rulers and officials under their dispensation by giving them important positions
and portfolios in the Mughal administration. For their part, such non-Hindu officials
accepted the rule of the Mughal Empire and worked for the emperor. Even at the time of
Aurangzeb, supposedly the most devout of Muslim rulers, only the topmost positions
were all occupied by the Muslims. A major part of the subordinate positions were filled
with Hindus. This certainly works against the view that the Mughal rule was the Muslim
rule over India.4
The Mughal rule gave rise to a complex social relationship among the elites, both
Hindus and Muslims, of the country. These relationships defied any simple
homogenization whether vertical or horizontal. A major social organization was based on
kinship pattern where people were related horizontally to each other through the ties of
marriage and kinship and such groups were related to the Mughal rule vertically. But this
was not the only pattern of social organization. David Lelyveld writes:

3 Ulama as a class is one which possesses the quality of ilm, that is knowledge or learning, science in the
widest sense.
4 For a discussion on the pattern of employment under the Mughal rule, see Lelyveld 1978.
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The major social categories among north Indian Hindus were the biradari, an exogamous
patrilineage, and the jati, an outer network of potential marriages. Jati was a loose category that
often substituted subdivisions of unequal status, and served in the society at large as a vehicle for
the attribution of moral qualities and therefore status. Among Muslims the principles of exogamy
and endogamy were weaker. There was often a strong preference for marrying within the close
patrilineal unit, also called biradari, but there was no outer boundary beyond which a Muslim male
could not make a legitimate marriage. (22; emphasis in the original)
Both these groups were associated with the Mughal rule in diverse ways through kinship
structure as well as through ―ritual ties of loyalty‖ (23). There was a set pattern on
manning different departments of the rule. No department consisted wholly of Muslim
staff or Hindu staff. The proportion of the staff of both these communities was carefully
planned out. Care was taken to ensure that members of the staff in the same locality are
not bound to each other through any kinship ties so that the only common bond between
them remains that of loyalty to the Emperor (23).
This means that a person could have got into the service of the Mughal Empire
through diverse ways. One was if his father or close relative is already in the service. The
other was to be a local feudal lord or subordinate to the local zamindars5 (landlords).
Another way was to have extraordinary administrative, military or educational abilities.
Many people who came from Arabian countries were absorbed into the Mughal
bureaucracy on the basis of their special ability.
As far as the Hindu social relationships go they were divided into numerous castes
and communities. The boundaries separating these castes and communities were not
homogeneous in all cases. The upper castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas) worked
together whenever their interests demanded so. Religion never prevented them from

5 Robinson (1974: 439) describes zamindars as the one who held the right of property in land and paid rent
to the government either individually or jointly under the colonial government. Zamindars, in turn, had the
right to collect rent and to regulate the occupancy of all other tenures on his estate.
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working with the Mughal Empire and they developed close affinity with the Muslim elite
who were their colleagues in bureaucracy and judiciary.6
The close contact between Hindus and Muslims created problems for British
officials too as their enterprise of identification and classification of Indian population7
consistently met with these sorts of overlapping social and religious customs of Hindus
and Muslims. Lelyveld refers to Henry M. Elliot who in 1848 complained of problems in
classifying some groups even in broad categories such as Hindu or Muslim. For him, a
Bhisti (a lower caste person who was engaged in carrying water for elite classes) looked
more Muslim than Hindu but he considered himself as a Hindu whereas Badgujars were
also included Muslims but retained their Rajput titles (13). Later edition of Elliot‘s text
(1869) was expanded by John Beames and it divided Muslims as:
Sayyids, Shaikhs, Mughals, Pathans, and a variety of artisan and service castes such as Jullahas
[weavers], Nais [barbers], Bihistis [water-carriers], and Dhobis [washer men]. Each of the artisan
and service groups had Hindu counterparts—or Hindu members. (Lelyveld 13)
Further overlap which problematized the neat distinctions of categories was recounted by
Denzil Ibbetson, Director of Punjab Census in 1882 who pointed out that in Western
Punjab, Hindus had a relaxed attitude to endogamy and that in Eastern Punjab it was hard
to differentiate a Muslim Rajput, Gujar or Jat from his Hindu counterpart. He further
illustrated that many Muslims retained Brahmin priests and there were cases of Muslim
Brahmins (Lelyveld 15). Francis Robinson in his book, Separatism Among Indian
Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860-1923, expresses the same
opinion. Robinson writes that in the British official records, ―the Muslims have been
treated as a monolithic bloc. This has been a matter of convenience. It was not a matter of
fact‖ (23-24). Robinson delineates the macro as well as micro divisions among the

6 For discussion on Hindu and Muslim participation in the Mughal bureaucracy, see Robinson 1974: 29-32.
7 Gyanendra Pandey (2006) calls this tendency as ―The colonial obsession with ethnic and doctrinal signs
for the identification of rival crowds…‖
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Muslim society. On the macro level, there were two divisions: ashraf8 and those of
indigenous origin. Ashrafs were those who considered themselves to be the descendants
of original immigrants to India such as Syeds, Sheikhs, Mughals and Pathans. The macro
group was of those Muslims who were the inhabitants of India and converted to Islam.
This was further subdivided into different categories: first, those who were converted
from high castes such as Rajputs; second, those who were converted from clean
occupations such as Julahas; and third, those who were converted from unclean
occupations such as Chamars. There were further divisions in the Muslim community
based on theological doctrines, Shias and Sunnis. These were further subdivided into
different school of thoughts. Further cleavages in the community can be seen in
conflicting interests in government services, land and religion. Most of ashrafs came from
their homelands in Middle East Asia to India in search of services in Mughal bureaucracy
or military. This trend continued even in the nineteenth century. The government service
was a major source of livelihood for most of these elites (Robinson 24-25).
Lelyveld locates these attempts of classifying the Indian society by the British in
the broader theory of history that saw the ―Indian society as a museum of evolutionary
layers each composed of separate, birth-defined social groups that were unable to relate to
each other as constituents of a larger whole‖ (16). It is easy to see that the labels used by
British officials in their census and other records were contradictory to the prevailing
social structure of the country and their efforts were arrived at best by freezing diverse
and seemingly contradictory labels of identity which were used by Indians to identify
themselves. For instance, the 1872 census uses four categories to classify the Indian
society: Aborigines, Aryans, Mixed, and Muslims. These four broad categories were
reduced to three in 1881 census where Aborigines and Mixed were merged to form a

8 Ashraf is the Urdu word for ‗gentleman‘. It is used to refer to Muslim person of rank or a Muslim
gentleman.
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single category. Again, caste was taken to be the feature of only Hindu religion as later
surveys used a label of ―Caste if Hindu, otherwise religion‖ (15). This relating of caste
only with Hindu went against the field experiences and works of Britishers such as Henry
M. Elliot (1848) and John Beames (1869) who found the practice of caste among
Muslims too.

3.3 Mughal Society v/s the East India Company: Rise of a New Social Landscape

The consolidation of the East India Company rule over India by the beginning of
the nineteenth century more or less brought far reaching changes in the social structure of
the Mughal society, that is, groups which were intricately linked to the Mughal rule by
the virtue of their employment in any category. Again these groups were not
homogeneous in anyway, except in their connection with the Mughal Empire. The landed
gentry amassed huge lands and estates for themselves from the Mughal Empire. The other
group was that which formed the cog in the wheel of Mughal bureaucracy, military and
judiciary. With the gradual decline in the Mughal power, the traditional avenues of
employment started shrinking rapidly for the social elite. The landed gentry did not face
any immediate financial problems with this rapid decline in the Mughal rule but the other
group, of bureaucrats and petty officials, was forced to look for other options for survival.
In the nineteenth century, East India Company increasingly became an important source
of employment for these people and most of these people took up jobs in different
departments of the East India Company ranging from revenue to judiciary to military.9
This transition from employment in the Mughal Empire to that of the East India Company
and later on the British colonial government was easier for Hindus but not so for the
Muslim elites. There were two divisions among them: those who considered the British as
usurpers of power from the Muslims of India and who resented any contact with them.

9 For a brief account of such instances see Gulfishan Khan 1998: 25-28.
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The other group was of those who believed very strongly that the East India Company
was in India for good and the Mughal rule had gone forever. This second group took up
employment with the East India Company in various capacities. There were those elites
whose capabilities were well-known and well-respected by both the Mughals as well as
the East India Company officials. Distinguished persons such as Mahomed Reza Khan,
Ali Ibrahim Khan, Khairuddin Khan Illahabadi, Khwaja Farid ud Din Ahmad Khan,
Tafazzul Hussain, Munshi Izatullah, etc. worked for both the powers and for some other
local rulers too.10 In fact, not only such people benefitted by their association with the
British, the British too gained much through their services. The importance of such
people for the British rule has been underlined by C. A. Bayly:
….until as late as the 1830s the Company‘s state could not have functioned without highly placed
Indian functionaries as munshis and ambassadors. In turn, their ‗native servants‘ helped to
perpetuate the archaic, status-conscious character of early British rule. (2007: 78)
Gulfishan Khan traces this tendency of moving from one power to another power in the
eighteenth century itself. In her book, Indian Muslim Perceptions of the West During the
Eighteenth Century, she locates this shift in the declining power of the Mughals:
As a result of succession of weak rulers at the centre of Mughal empire resulted in diminishing
remittance of revenue from different parts of the Empire. This led to difficulty in maintaining the
military and bureaucratic machinery and result in job loss for many small mansabdars, soldiers,
subordinate officers of revenue and military department. (23)
Many people in the service gentry, who were formerly with the Mughal Empire, gained
entry into the East India Company services.11 A few of them succeeded in gaining higher
positions and enjoyed the confidence of higher authorities by a combination of
administrative skills and literary acumen (25). Syed Ahmad‘s maternal grandfather
Khwaja Farid ud Din Ahmad was one such person who served both the powers in

10 For detailed information on these and other such people, see C. A. Bayly 2007: 78-86.
11 C. A. Bayly writes that ―By the early nineteenth century British service seemed the only guarantee of a
gentleman‘s competency‖ (2007: 84).
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multiple capacities. In his active public life, he worked as the superintendent of Calcutta
madarasa established by the East India Company, served as an envoy of the East India
Company, became a tehsildar, then joined the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar Shah II as
a minister, was forced to leave the job and go to Calcutta once again, and finally he was
recalled to the court of Akbar Shah II (R. Gandhi 1987: 20). But perhaps, Khwaja Farid
ud Din was last of the generation which moved effortlessly from one ruling power to
another. After that the choice was sharply divided: either to be in the employ of the East
India Company or to work with the rapidly declining Mughal Empire or local rulers.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the East India Company had become a
major employer in India. They became the government of the country and their
employees became the ‗government‘ employees, especially after 1857 when the British
rule remained the only rule in most parts of India. The British rule brought in its own
bureaucracy which was a mixture of the British and the Mughal. To be in the government
service by the middle of the nineteenth century was to wield enormous power. Robinson
notes the growing importance of this class of government servants throughout the second
half of the nineteenth century. He writes:
The most powerful group in nineteenth-century India were (sic) the government servants. Of the
54.000 who helped to govern the province [United Province] in 1880, a mere 200 belonged to the
ruling race; the great body of administration was transacted, as in other provinces, by Indians. The
powers of government servants were great. They estimated the peasant‘s land revenue, they
assessed the trader‘s income tax. They decided who was right in squabbles over irrigation and
religious customs. They even chose who should succeed them in these functions. These may not
seem odd powers for government servants to wield, but in a society in which family and clan
loyalties were strong, in which communal antagonism was endemic, in which, in fact, impartiality
was practically impossible and thought to be so, they were less the reasonable powers of
government than a licence to confer favour, to withhold rights and harass. (20-21)
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This clearly indicates that the old ways of bureaucratic functioning was still prevalent.
The new administration did not completely wipe out the old way of entering into the
services. Newer ways of recruitment based on competition existed alongside the kinship
and apprentice pattern of recruitment. In fact, the recruitment based on competitive
examination was resisted by many departments of the Company (45). It was in this
complex social pattern of early nineteenth century colonial India that Syed Ahmad must
be placed.

3.4 Syed Ahmad Khan: Rise of a New Social Elite
Syed Ahmad Khan was born in 1817 amidst the most confusing times for the
Muslim elite in the Mughal North India. He was raised in a comfortable household of his
maternal grandfather Khwaja Farid ud Din Ahmad. Syed Ahmad traced his lineage right
the Prophet Mohammad himself (Hali 1). His ancestors migrated to India during the reign
of Shahjahan and they got into imperial service. This association continued till the death
of Mir Muttaqi, Syed Ahmad‘s father. Syed Ahmad, on his part, refused to join the
Mughal services and chose instead the East India Company as an employer.
Syed Ahmad‘s father, Mir Muttaqi, was a carefree person who was inclined
towards mysticism and some of his free-spiritedness also went into the personality of
Syed Ahmad (Hali 3). But the decisive influence on him in his childhood was his mother
Aziz un Nisa and his maternal grandfather Khwaja Farid ud Din Ahmad. Hali draws an
elaborate account of Aziz un Nisa showing how her straightforward religiosity, shorn of
superstition rubbed off on Syed Ahmad. It was his mother who taught him the etiquette of
the sharif12 culture in many ways (9). Khwaja Farid ud Din was an exceptional diplomat

12 Sharif, in Islam, is used for those Muslims who ancestors came to India from Arabia, that is, they were
not converted into Islam from any Indian religion. The term is used to describe the hierarchy among
Muslims in India. Those belonging to sharif culture consider themselves superior to those who converted to
Islam from other religions in India. The primary education of children in such a culture was to learn what it